Pitch of the Day: 'The Core 2'

In case you hadn't noticed, due to my growing up listening to too much classic rock radio I'm into the whole "two for Tuesdays thing." Sometimes, though, it's very difficult to find a movie worth sequeling for the Tuesday edition of Pitch of the Day. Not this week. Maybe you've seen the report on NASA's website hypothesizing that since the Chilean earthquake on Saturday, days on Earth may be shorter. By only 1.26 microseconds, but still it's crazy what natural disasters can do. By comparison, the Sumatra quake from 2004 (the one that caused the devastating tsunami) actually may have shortened the day by a whopping 6.8 microseconds.

Now, imagine how the makers of The Core could take that interesting story and use it for another wild ride through the planet. This time in 3D! Because it's Hollywood, and they like to exaggerate science, particularly for disaster movies, maybe a giant earthquake has caused the day to be shortened by 1.26 hours! And again the core has stopped, and the axis is altered. Or something-something else happens that could potentially lead to all of life as we know it ceasing to exist. Whatever, I don't understand all the technical stuff, and neither did the makers of the original movie, which has infamously been criticized for having some of the worst scientific inaccuracies of all time (see our "Silliest Disaster Scenarios" Cinematical Seven for a highlight of some of this laughable stuff).

In fact, coincidentally, last weekThe Guardian ran that article about a professor's proposal for Hollywood to stop making movies with such terrible science in them. He worries that we'll all believe what we see in these films -- perhaps that we'll think global warming's effects will be as rapid as shown in The Day After Tomorrow(and lead us to believe that we can run from cold?). He does point out, however, that the people realized The Core is preposterous, and that's why nobody saw it. Well I saw it -- for free, I'll admit it -- precisely for its bad science (am I alone in this?). And I'd see The Core 2 for some of the same. Especially in 3D. Of course, the fact that nobody else saw it may also mean Paramount won't be interested in making this sequel. Hilary Swank might be down, though.